Monday, July 29, 2013

Super clear Skies

We had some heavy rains Saturday and a little bit Sunday morning.  The skies were crystal clear on Sunday and on into Sunday night.  Sandra's cousin, Bud Gillan, saw a great green flash at sunset time.
I set up an equatorial mount and camera in our back yard and shot a bunch of images of the area around zeta Ophiuchus.  There is a monstrously huge, but faint H-II emission region there. 
While those automated five minute long exposures through a h-alpha filter were happening, Bud and I drove out to the south end of the island to see the Milky Way.  It was truly awesome, as good as it gets here on Bonaire.
Here are a couple shots of the Milky Way stars with the lighthouse in the foreground.  It is the same one minute long exposure, one version has been sharpened more than the other.  You can click on them to see them bigger.  That yellow glow on the horizon is Venezuela.  You can use Google Earth to identify the cities, some 70mi. away.  The streak in the lower left corner, that looks like a meteor, is actually an airplane.  We did see some great meteors last night, but I don't know that I caught any of them in a picture.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Spectacular shot of the Milky Way, Brad. Glad I kept clicking on "Next Blog" just now and found your blog. God bless. Greetings from Alberta, Canada.

Stan